HBR Guides to Managing Your Career Collection (6 Books)

CHAPTER 12

Change Your Career Without Having to Start All Over Again

by Dorie Clark

The thought of giving up hard-earned seniority and starting over at the bottom is often too demoralizing for those of us experienced professionals who’d like to make a career transition. But there are ways you can shift jobs or even careers without giving up your professional status. Instead, you can work creatively to transfer it, so that even if you’re starting in a completely different field, you’ll benefit from your years of labor. Here are four ways to capitalize on your past experience.

Take Advantage of the Halo Effect

Since the early 1920s, researchers have understood that people are generally susceptible to the “halo effect”: viewing others as being totally ...